A new measure

… across Government we are tackling the barriers that hold people back, through dynamic interventions which will make real difference to individuals’ wellbeing and their children’s future life chances.

Our commitment to developing a new multidimensional measure of child poverty means that, finally, we will be able to measure the effect of interventions like these.

By segmenting the central drivers of poverty, identifying those children most entrenched in disadvantage and who are on poor trajectories…

… we can both target policies that have the most impact, and hold ourselves accountable for the results.

Consultation

As I have said, we are consulting now on what this measure should look like.

Addiction is one important form of poverty, but it is not the only form.

The process provides an opportunity and a forum to consider our options.

There are many we could pursue - as part of the consultation we need to consider how different dimensions interrelate, which overlap, and which can be easily quantified.